Triathlon Forum
Login required to started new threads
Login required to post replies
Post deleted by Administrator
Re: Acceptable hip angle? [Fresh2death]
[ In reply to ]
Interesting that nobody responded to this.
Personally I like to be below 100°. At 120° I don't seem to produce as much power as I do when lower
Personally I like to be below 100°. At 120° I don't seem to produce as much power as I do when lower
Re: Acceptable hip angle? [Fresh2death]
[ In reply to ]
Different takes on it depending on who you ask, and also if you were to look at athletes you'd see a pretty wide range. I think FIST's range is/was ~95-105
*of course all that heavily depends on exactly where you take your measurements, etc. Apples to apples, 120 sounds to be on the high (sitting up) end.
My Blog - http://leegoocrap.blogspot.com
*of course all that heavily depends on exactly where you take your measurements, etc. Apples to apples, 120 sounds to be on the high (sitting up) end.
My Blog - http://leegoocrap.blogspot.com
Re: Acceptable hip angle? [Fresh2death]
[ In reply to ]
Better to focus on the closed hip angle - that is where the restriction is. Open hip angle is only useful as a measure of general orthodoxy.
Fresh2death wrote:
I am a decent triathlete but never got comfortable with an agressive fit on my bike. I am happy with my bike times for the most part and my run is my biggest strength. My question is, is a 120 degree hip angle acceptable or completely out of the norm? It is measured from shoulder to hook to center of BB. I am comfortable but I could start dropping my front end a little bit to get used to it if 120 degrees is out of the normal acceptable range. Thanks for your input!I don't know where the "hook" is so not sure what you are measuring. The shoulder is sort of a vague term as well. In any case, if we are talking about a properly measured FIST hip angle of 120 degrees, and this is truly where you pedal best, you are 1. an outlier 2. really fluffy 3. shortish with long cranks. I guess 3, as outliers are a last resort, and even a bunch of extra tonnage around the waist isn't that big of an impediment to an orthodox position IF pelvic posture, crank length, and setback are addressed.
As far as ignoring FIST hip angle and focusing on the closed hip angle, my approach when a rider has trouble getting low is to figure out where the restriction is. I assume everyone can get low until the session (rarely) proves otherwise. So if we were stuck at 120 degrees, we would definitely be looking to improve the situation at the top of the stroke, but I don't want to ignore FIST prescribed range of hip angles.... I want to get to the range via cranks, posture, setback etc.
The cause of the restriction isn't just knee flexion and it isn't just thigh to torso clearance, it is both things working together. Or not working together. It's why road bikes still need shorter cranks for smaller riders, but generally not as short as tri bikes. The knee flexion is still problematic, but it isn't exacerbated by the thigh to torso angle.
At some point there is going to be some type of quadratic equation driving crank length selection, and I suspect it is going include a range of acceptable total angle, and this equation will give the knee flexion a bit more weighting but include the thigh torso. Like, if the sum of 2x knee flexion and 1x thigh torso is smaller than 175 degrees, shorten the crank until it ain't.
Anyway, post a damn video.